Associate Professor Colin Gunckel Publishes Essay in Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896-1960
Colin Gunckel published "The Secret History of Aztlán: Speculative Histories, Transnational Exploitation Film, and Unexpected Cultural Flows" in the Indiana University Press anthology Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896-1960, edited by Rielle Navitski and Nicolas Poppe.
The essay examines the transnational conception and travel of Mexican exploitation films of the 1950s and 1960s, arguing that their obsession with Aztec mummies marks a counter-intuitively pivotal moment in the representation of indigenous Mexico and conceptions of nationalism. As such, these films unintentionally established formal and aesthetic precedents by which contemporary cross-border artists and media makers interrogate and deconstruct monolithic renderings of Mexican history and nationalism.